Hey Travel Gurus!
One question I get a lot based on my background is how many languages I’m able
to speak. This is usually followed by question in the likes of how in the heck
I learned three languages. While I learned English through the natural
scientific process of encoding stimuli from my environment to a language
pattern, my secondary languages couldn’t have been learned as proficiently as
they are without travel.
Aside from English, I am able to speak both Arabic and French, the main
languages of my parents’ home country of Tunisia. However, it hasn’t always
been that way. Being immersed into a new, foreign, setting my parents wanted to
make sure that they would raise kids that appreciated and had a direct line to
their ancestral heritage. This determination soon manifested itself into hour
long lessons with my mom on weekends and the interjection of Arabic in the
house whenever possible. This definitely helped, and while I was able to carry
out fairly detailed conversations with my relatives on my trips to Tunisia, it
was quite obvious that I wasn’t as skilled as I could be. This was to be
expected however, living the majority of my life, in school, with my friends,
watching TV or even being with my parents when they weren’t in Arabic mode
didn’t allow much room for foreign language retention. I was a rope and my
American surroundings were winning the game of tug-of-war.
The breaking point for my
parents was taking my younger and even less fluent brothers to Sunday school
only to find that they didn’t even know the Arabic alphabet. Inspired by a
family’s friend trek to Turkey for two years so their children could learn the
language and culture, my parents organized an impromptu vacay to Tunisia, to take
place immediately after the end of that school year. Only I wouldn’t come back
home to Vermont, rather Cedar Rapids Iowa where my dad had procured a promising
position at Rockwell Collins.
Fifth
grade had soon come to a close and while I was excited to see the beautiful
country my parents grew up in again and spend more time around my extended
family, I couldn’t help but feel anxious on missing out an entire year of –
arguably the most socially groundbreaking – good ol American public school. How
would I recover? Would I forget English? How could reintegrate myself in a
whole new state? And perhaps the scariest, how in the h e double hockey sticks,
how could I keep up my academic success in school that teaches a language I
only barely know the slang version of? (The Arabic language varies drastically
from its pure form from country to country).
Soon
I found myself in an average sized middle school where I was to be in a class a
grade below mine, due to my lack of abilities. Students schoolwide were
enamored by the foreign girl from America who knew perfect English and had a
weird accent when she talked Arabic. It would take me a while to socially
adjust, but I hadn’t even begun to think of that when the very weirdly-sounding
bell called for first hour, but first, the national anthem in which the whole
school would gather around the courtyard to pay salute to the massive flag.
Walking in, the classroom was bit shabbier than in America, but nothing
traumatizing.
To
put it bluntly, these months, although very foreign at first were some of the
best months of my life. I made so many new friends I still keep in touch with
today, learned real life street skills in a country where independence was
encouraged from a young age and increased my adaptability. I could go on and
lose myself in this blog post and write about all the new and exciting things I
experienced but that would lose the focus of this blog post. Or would it? I
think it’s important to understand that the language and culture shock I went
through – relearning all subjects I know in Arabic, experiencing a different
education system, differentiating between social and formal situations and
learning second year French right off the bat when all I knew was “bonjour”–
gave me a chance to learn the language with such depth and at such a rapid rate
that I couldn’t have achieved anywhere else.
For
those with the resources contemplating a year in a foreign country, just do it,
take a leap of faith. You may want to run back after your first couple days but
give time, you will emerge a new person with an understanding of a new language
you can’t learn in a classroom.
So au revoir, salam, and goodbye.
Until next time,
Taz
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